Foretaste Of The Sermon To Come
A little nibble of the Revised Common Lectionary
Sunday’s readings are: Genesis 18:20-32, Colossians 2:6-15 [16-19], and Luke 11:1-13.
I am so happy to be able to write our Foretaste blog after my long illness. I have missed writing about God’s Word, and I look forward to returning to the rhythm of the Revised Common Lectionary.
Sunday’s lectionary readings are so rich — Abraham’s bargaining with God about the fate of Sodom, Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer, and the famous “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.” So what to focus on?
Well, there is a common thread between the Genesis reading and the two passages in Luke, and that is prayer, or conversation with God.
In our gospel, Jesus responds to a disciple’s request for a lesson in how to pray, and he gives the following very simple model: addressing and worshiping our holy God, welcoming God’s kingdom among us, praying for our needs, praying for forgiveness and for saving us from trial or sin. This prayer summarizes Jesus’ theological teaching which makes sense when we think of Jesus’ concerns in the Gospel of Luke — prayer, the building of God’s kingdom on earth, reliance on God for our needs, and the forgiveness of sin.
The verb tense and adjective used in the request for “daily” bread gives the sense of an ongoing and future request, perhaps invoking the heavenly feast we will all enjoy when Christ ushers in once and for all God’s kingdom. This request for simple bread may really be much more complex. Prayer for daily bread includes asking for literal food, our daily needs, the spiritual sustenance received in Christ’s body and blood in Holy Communion, Christ as the “bread of life”, and our glorious meal at Christ’s banquet table in the fully realized Kingdom of God.
He goes on to use the parable of an unprepared host to give these famous words, “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who seeks finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” The NRSV’s header for this parable is “Perseverance in Prayer”— the unprepared host is “persistent” in his request for bread for his guests. The Greek word for “persistent” can be translated as “audacious, shameless, bold” — Putting this parable right next to the Lord’s Prayer and in our lectionary with Abraham’s audacious, shameless, bold persistence in his interceding for Sodom, we are encouraged to have the same audacious persistence in our prayer.
The conversation between God and Abraham about saving Sodom shows that it is within God’s eternal, immutable nature to change course when our prayer aligns with his will. So we can also be audacious and bold in our prayer and know that God is always listening. Whether or not he answers in the way we want, he is with us through whatever it is we we are praying about.
